Survival

Root Beer

Dylan pushes her red hair out of her face and takes a small sip of water. She looks out the broken wall, waiting for the ash and dirt to settle before heading out to find more supplies.

She places her water bottle back in her stash and pushes it in a cabinet where she stored her supplies, to hide it from anybody who might come by.

Once the air is clear, Dylan takes her small hunting knife, strictly for protection, and her old school backpack and goes out to look around.

She has to walk further and further everyday as she clears out houses near the house that she sleeps in.

She approaches a house, moving slowly. She gets to the door and pushes it open. "Hello?" Dylan calls out. "Anybody here?" She hasn't seen people in nearly 3 months, when her brother was caught under a a collapsed house, she wasn't able to help him in time.

"That sucks." Dylan says out loud as she makes her way to the houses kitchen. She opens a few cabinets, most of them just had pots and pans. Finally Dylan finds a case of water bottles and a 2 liter of root beer. "Nice" she mutters to herself.

After putting the water and soda in her bag she looks around for any edible food. She finds a few cans. Things like canned corn and baked beans. "Good enough for today." She puts the cans in her bag, which is now very full.

She goes to the bathroom and looks for toothpaste and soap. Once she gets some she goes upstairs to look for clothes she could wear.

The only thing she finds is an over sized jacket, which she pulls on before going outside to make the half mile journey back to her camp, if you could even call it that.

She gets back and goes inside the house. And empties her bag into the cabinets of the kitchen.

Dylan sits back onto the cot she had made out of blankets and pillows, since most of the mattresses had bugs, and she opens her root beer and takes a long drink, the carbonation burning her throat as it goes down.

She pulls the bottle away from her mouth and wipes the excess from her face.

"Man that's good." She put the lid back on and puts it aside for later.

Dylan takes the baked beans she found and uses her can opener to open it. She eats them with a fork that she's been trying to keep clean.

After just a few bites she hears very light shuffling from outside.

Dylan slowly gets up and walks to the door as quietly as possible.

She get to the front door and opens it slightly, when she doesn't see anything she steps outside. Then she sees it.

Right in front of Dylan is a little girl, no more then 6, holding a torn up teddy bear.

"Oh shit." Dylan says.